Text Blackness Logo

TEXT BLACKNESS

A browser extension that intelligently darkens text.
No more squinting at tiny, grey, thin text!

Get it from Google Chrome Store Get it from Microsoft Edge Store

About

Text Blackness is a browser extension that makes web sites easier to read by intelligently darkening, enlarging, and thickening all text on web pages. Users can customize how much blacker and how much colour is allowed.

Compared to other alternatives, Text Blackness' carefully designed algorithm tries its best to avoid messing up text that shouldn't be darkened, especially in a complicated modern web sites.

Text Blackness supports Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Chromium, Vivaldi, Opera, Brave, and most browsers that supports Chrome extensions.

Features

Installation

Please click here to install Text Blackness from Chrome Web Store.

Pricing

The user pays a one-time fee of 16.99 USD after a 7-day trial period. This allows Text Blackness to be activated 10 times, i.e., for one payment the user can use it on at most 10 browsers. There is no limitation on how many devices these 10 browsers are installed on as long as they are used by the same person. We don't offer refunds unless it was due to duplicate purchases, so please try the extension before buying.

I know, most browser extensions are free. Or are they? Actually, many of them earn money by silently collecting your data; some integrate with various ad techs; some are borderline malware; some are made by big businesses; some are genuine volunteer work made by generous individuals.

Software development is hard work. I don't want to sell your data, but yet I have a family to feed. If you find this software useful, please kindly consider supporting this little honest browser extension that don't silently spy on you. :)

Screenshots

Screenshot; before vs after comparison
Text Blackness intelligently blacken greyish text together with coloured text, so that web pages are made easier to read without ruining the original web page's overall design.

Screenshot; Text Blackness can intelligently darken colourful text on fancy background
When background is colourful and the text is half-way between black and white, and Text Blackness can decide whether to blacken or whiten automatically without any user interaction.

Screenshot; Text Blackness gives users fine control over appearance of their web pages
Users can control how colourful he wants his text to look. He might also choose to underline all hyperlinks so that he knows which element are clickable without relying on colours as a clue. Additionally, if a web page uses thin or small font size, users can set a minimal font size and font weight.

Who made it?

Text Blackness is a Swedish family business operated by Woodrow Kiang.

Contact

Please drop me an email support@textblackness.net if you have any questions and suggestions.

FAQ

Why should I choose Text Blackness when there are free alternatives?

Many alternatives are confused often by modern UI components. Buttons that change colour after clicking, white-on-black menu items, and certain email web clients that strip malicious code off your emails are examples that often confuse other text darkeners.

Text Blackness has a more sophisticated algorithm that tries hard not to misbehave in complex modern web sites.

Also, most alternatives simply snap near black and near white text to pure black or white using a greyness threshold. On the other hand, when Text Blackness darkens text, it performs subtle optical corrections to account for the subjective perception to different colours by human eyes. For example, users may notice that greenish and yellowish text are darkened a bit more than blue because our eyes are generally better at reading blue text than green and yellow. With Text Blackness, blue text remains perceivably blue and red perceivably red; overall design of your page is well preserved while all colours are made more readable.

In other words, Text Blackness processes your web pages like a delicate, civilised gentleman rather than like a barbaric fellah.

Why do so many web sites use awful light grey fonts?

Design trend; but someone will likely disagree. There seems to be a rumour on the Internet that lower 'contrast' provides better readability. When web designers and bloggers say 'text contrast', they usually mean the luminance ratio between the foreground and the background. Is it true, though?

It is perhaps true, for some people, in some environment, while performing some specific task for a specific duration; it also depends on what kind of 'better' we are talking about—for example, the 30-minute reading speed performance of a 20/20-visioned 20-year-old and 40-hour work week eye strain of a nearsighted 45-year-old aren't neccessarily the same thing. If you skim through a few search results on Google Scholar, you can unsurprisingly see that rigorous scientific experiments are all done with great details specified. Unlike random Internet blog posts, not much peer-reviewed researches have made the simple one-size-fit-all, grey-text-is-better conclusion; no research to date have concluded firmly that grey-on-pure-white is 'just better' than black-on-pure-white after controlling age, eye condition, room brightness, and monitor backlight intensity, and the duration of the reading task.

Furthermore, using a grey font isn't the only way to lower the text contrast ratio that these bloggers keep parroting. In a white-background setting, simply dimming down the brightness of one's monitor would decrease the perceived colour contrast as well, because when monitor is dim the background would appear more greyish. It is a scientific wonder which of pure-black-on-grey and grey-on-pure-white is better for eye health in the long run.

Does it support Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer?

Why use Text Blackness' font size functionality rather than built-in zooming?

Why doesn't the 'normal' font weight button change anything?

Why is there a functionality to turn everything bold? Aren't bolds harder to read?

What are 'Colour Forgivingness' and 'More Colourful Hyperlinks'?

I use Opera. Why doesn't the extension work on search result pages?

Why do Text Blackness occasionally blackens text mistakenly?

Why are some pages left unchanged by Text Blackness?

Chrome warns that you can 'read and change all data on all websites'. Why?

Why does Chrome Store say you 'collect personally identifiable information'?

Why not offer refunds?

Privacy Policy

What data do we record?

Short answer: if you don't purchase we record nothing; when you purchase, the payment gateway allows us to see your email and last four digits of your card number. In addition, Chrome Web Store, Microsoft Edge Store, and Opera Store have functionalities that allow us to see some anonymous statistics such as number of users, their countries, and traffic volume of the extension listing pages (not https://textblackness.net). Other than these, we know absolutely nothing about what you browse and who you are. We make money from selling you software, not from spying on you. It may not even be legal to spy on your browsing data under GDPR anyway.

Long answer: Text Blackness tries hard to record as little information as possible. We do not operate a backend server ourselves at all, and the browser extension will never send any of your data to us. Your browsing history and data from any web pages that you visit will never be sent to us or any third party. The only information collected by us are those necessary to facilitate payment.

You remain completely anonymous to us until you make a purchase with us. No data from you and about you is sent to us from the browser extension until you make a purchase.

However, in order to process your payment, we use two third-party services: ExtensionPay (https://extensionpay.com/) and Stripe (https://stripe.com/). ExtensionPay is a third-party service that facilitates log-in emails and send you email confirmation after you have paid. They may store your email address to make logging in possible. Once you have made a purchase, Stripe, the payment processor that we use, may store credit card details and other personal information, probably for many years. However, Text Blackness do not have access to your credit card details beyond the last four digits of your card and the type of your card.

Once you have purchased the extension, Stripe will allow us to see your email address, the last four digits of your credit card, payment method (such as Visa or Master Card), amount of money spent, and payment date. We might backup these data for the purpose of allowing account recovery and bookkeeping.

Third-party platforms such as Google Chrome Store, the Microsoft Edge Add-on store, and the Opera Add-on store may collect information about your usage of browser extensions on their own according to their own privacy policy. Although Text Blackness cannot stop your browsers from sending these information back to Google, Microsoft, nor Opera, these information are never sent to our server. All these third-party platforms have a developer portal that shows us aggregated, non-personally-identifiable usage statistics such as number of users and their countries. We will at times look at these statistics to improve our service.

How do we store personal data?

We might download and backup the payment-related data from Stripe for tax and accounting as suggested by Swedish laws. When we do so, Text Blackness is subject to EU and Swedish laws and store all personal data and process within EU. We are located in Sweden. These data will never be shared to third-parties unless law enforcement or government agencies order us to do so.

What are your data protection right?

We would like to make sure you are fully aware of all of your data protection rights. Every user is entitled to the following:

The right to access. You have the right to request us for copies of your personal data. We may charge you a small fee for this service.

The right to rectification. You have the right to request that we correct any information you believe is inaccurate. You also have the right to request us to complete information you believe is incomplete.

The right to erasure. You have the right to request that we erase your personal data, under certain conditions.

The right to object to processing. You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data, under certain conditions

The right to data portability. You have the right to request that we transfer the data that we have collected to another organisation, or directly to you, under certain conditions.

If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact support@textblackness.net

TERMS OF SERVICE

Text Blackness is a browser extension developed and operated by Woodrow Kiang, a sole trader in Sweden. By downloading the software, you agree to this terms of service.

All service and software is presented ‘as-is’. We disclaim all warranties, specifically, of non-infringement of copyright and fitness of any particular purpose.

User must make a one-time purchase to continue using the software after a 7-day trial period. After making a one-time purchase, the customer is allowed to activate Text Blackness 10 times, i.e., for each payment the user can use it on at most 10 browsers. 'Activation' means clicking on a log-in link sent to the users' email address. There is no limitation on how many devices these 10 browsers are installed on, as long as they are used by the same person. One purchase only grants one person the right to use the software, and customers must not share his access to the software to any other persons. If the customer were a company or an organisation, one purchase only grants one person in the company or organisation the right to use the software. We do not offer refunds.

The customer must not copy, modify, or redistribute the software in any form. The customer must not reverse engineer the software.

The customer must use our software legally and ethically. It is up to the customer to decide the legality of the way he or she use our software. We reserve the right to refuse service to anybody if we suspect illegal use or unethical use.

Third-party services and web sites have different terms of use from us. We are not responsible for any damages to content, service, and availability of third-party sites caused by any of the customer's action using our software. By installing and using our software, the customer agree that we are not responsible for any damage incurred from dealing with such third-parties.

© 2025 Woodrow Kiang. All Rights Reserved.